Tootfinder

"It's "#ORCID and…," not "ORCID or…": How researcher identifiers work together to help researchers, build a better picture of research, and streamline administrative tasks": White Paper by MoreBrains › https://

Subtooting since people in the original thread wanted it to be over, but selfishly tagging @… and @… whose opinions I value...
I think that saying "we are not a supply chain" is exactly what open-source maintainers should be doing right now in response to "open source supply chain security" threads.
I can't claim to be an expert and don't maintain any important FOSS stuff, but I do release almost all of my code under open licenses, and I do use many open source libraries, and I have felt the pain of needing to replace an unmaintained library.
There's a certain small-to-mid-scale class of program, including many open-source libraries, which can be built/maintained by a single person, and which to my mind best operate on a "snake growth" model: incremental changes/fixes, punctuated by periodic "skin-shedding" phases where make rewrites or version updates happen. These projects aren't immortal either: as the whole tech landscape around them changes, they become unnecessary and/or people lose interest, so they go unmaintained and eventually break. Each time one of their dependencies breaks (or has a skin-shedding moment) there's a higher probability that they break or shed too, as maintenance needs shoot up at these junctures. Unless you're a company trying to make money from a single long-lived app, it's actually okay that software churns like this, and if you're a company trying to make money, your priorities absolutely should not factor into any decisions people making FOSS software make: we're trying (and to a huge extent succeeding) to make a better world (and/or just have fun with our own hobbies share that fun with others) that leaves behind the corrosive & planet-destroying plague which is capitalism, and you're trying to personally enrich yourself by embracing that plague. The fact that capitalism is *evil* is not an incidental thing in this discussion.
To make an imperfect analogy, imagine that the peasants of some domain have set up a really-free-market, where they provide each other with free stuff to help each other survive, sometimes doing some barter perhaps but mostly just everyone bringing their surplus. Now imagine the lord of the domain, who is the source of these peasants' immiseration, goes to this market secretly & takes some berries, which he uses as one ingredient in delicious tarts that he then sells for profit. But then the berry-bringer stops showing up to the free market, or starts bringing a different kind of fruit, or even ends up bringing rotten berries by accident. And the lord complains "I have a supply chain problem!" Like, fuck off dude! Your problem is that you *didn't* want to build a supply chain and instead thought you would build your profit-focused business in other people's free stuff. If you were paying the berry-picker, you'd have a supply chain problem, but you weren't, so you really have an "I want more free stuff" problem when you can't be arsed to give away your own stuff for free.
There can be all sorts of problems in the really-free-market, like maybe not enough people bring socks, so the peasants who can't afford socks are going barefoot, and having foot problems, and the peasants put their heads together and see if they can convince someone to start bringing socks, and maybe they can't and things are a bit sad, but the really-free-market was never supposed to solve everyone's problems 100% when they're all still being squeezed dry by their taxes: until they are able to get free of the lord & start building a lovely anarchist society, the really-free-market is a best-effort kind of deal that aims to make things better, and sometimes will fall short. When it becomes the main way goods in society are distributed, and when the people who contribute aren't constantly drained by the feudal yoke, at that point the availability of particular goods is a real problem that needs to be solved, but at that point, it's also much easier to solve. And at *no* point does someone coming into the market to take stuff only to turn around and sell it deserve anything from the market or those contributing to it. They are not a supply chain. They're trying to help each other out, but even then they're doing so freely and without obligation. They might discuss amongst themselves how to better coordinate their mutual aid, but they're not going to end up forcing anyone to bring anything or even expecting that a certain person contribute a certain amount, since the whole point is that the thing is voluntary & free, and they've all got changing life circumstances that affect their contributions. Celebrate whatever shows up at the market, express your desire for things that would be useful, but don't impose a burden on anyone else to bring a specific thing, because otherwise it's fair for them to oppose such a burden on you, and now you two are doing your own barter thing that's outside the parameters of the really-free-market.

Music Production: How to Grow a Listener Base with Your Music 📡
https://www.levelsmusicproduction.com/blog/music-production-how-to-grow-a-listener-base-with-your-music?utm_sourc…

Music Production: How to Grow a Listener Base with Your Music
Want to grow a real listener base for your music? Learn how to cut through the noise, connect with fans, and build systems that turn attention into lasting community — with tips, tactics, and a comparison chart.

How brains build higher order representations of uncertainty
Megan A. K. Peters, Hojjat Azimi Asrari
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.19057 https://

How brains build higher order representations of uncertainty
Higher-order representations (HORs) are neural or computational states that are "about" first-order representations (FORs), encoding information not about the external world per se but about the agent's own representational processes -- such as the reliability, source, or structure of a FOR. These HORs appear critical to metacognition, learning, and even consciousness by some accounts, yet their dimensionality, construction, and neural substrates remain poorly understood. Here, we propose that …

Isn't it weird how when a Federal Crown Corporation - Marine Atlantic - buys a new ship... there is nary a mention that it was built in China (#BCPoli #BCFerries

Chris Arnade was one of my favorite followers on the old place. One of the very few people who thinks very deeply, but also outside of their own silos, to create a cross-disciplinary theory of the world. One of the few people who is truly willing to see the world as it is.
The solutions to our problems will never come from one realm of expertise, but only by synthesizing a strategy from a more holistic world view.

How to Build the Perfect City
Epsilon Theory contributor and all-around good human Chris Arnade pauses from walking the world to take a first cut at a grand unified theory of

To add a single example here (feel free to chime in with your own):
Problem: editing code is sometimes tedious because external APIs require boilerplate.
Solutions:
- Use LLM-generated code. Downsides: energy use, code theft, potential for legal liability, makes mistakes, etc. Upsides: popular among some peers, seems easy to use.
- Pick a better library (not always possible).
- Build internal functions to centralize boilerplate code, then use those (benefits: you get a better understanding of the external API, and a more-unit-testable internal code surface; probably less amortized effort).
- Develop a non-LLM system that actually reasons about code at something like the formal semantics level and suggests boilerplate fill-ins based on rules, while foregrounding which rules it's applying so you can see the logic behind the suggestions (needs research).
Obviously LLM use in coding goes beyond this single issue, but there are similar analyses for each potential use of LLMs in coding. I'm all cases there are:
1. Existing practical solutions that require more effort (or in many cases just seem to but are less-effort when amortized).
2. Near-term researchable solutions that directly address the problem and which would be much more desirable in the long term.
Thus in addition to disastrous LLM effects on the climate, on data laborers, and on the digital commons, they tend to suck us into cheap-seeming but ultimately costly design practices while also crowding out better long-term solutions. Next time someone suggests how useful LLMs are for some task, try asking yourself (or them) what an ideal solution for that task would look like, and whether LLM use moves us closer to or father from a world in which that solution exists.

How to Build a Compassionate Workplace
#DoingGood
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/artic

How to Build a Compassionate Workplace
There are many ways that organizations can show they care for their people and the world—and many benefits to doing so.

Open Scene Graphs for Open-World Object-Goal Navigation
Joel Loo, Zhanxin Wu, David Hsu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.04678 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.04678…

Open Scene Graphs for Open-World Object-Goal Navigation
How can we build general-purpose robot systems for open-world semantic navigation, e.g., searching a novel environment for a target object specified in natural language? To tackle this challenge, we introduce OSG Navigator, a modular system composed of foundation models, for open-world Object-Goal Navigation (ObjectNav). Foundation models provide enormous semantic knowledge about the world, but struggle to organise and maintain spatial information effectively at scale. Key to OSG Navigator is t…

Studio Rúcach @… in collaboration with CREW are excited to announce a two-part masterclass exploring co-operative models for game dev.
Part 1: Navigating Co-Op Mode (Online)
Hear from co-ops creating equitable workplaces in the games industry.

How to Build a Compassionate Workplace https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_to_build_a_compassionate_workplace

How to Build a Compassionate Workplace
There are many ways that organizations can show they care for their people and the world—and many benefits to doing so.

How to Feel More Hopeful https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/podcasts/item/how_to_feel_more_hopeful?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_content=muz4now/magazine/Signs of%2…

How to Feel More Hopeful
How can we build a sense of hope when the future feels uncertain? Poet Tomás Morín tries a writing practice to make him feel more hopeful and motivated to work toward his goals.

"Here’s my perfect vocal chain and the plugins that get me there"
Not the ones I use, but worth checking out.
#MusicianTips #RecordingStudio

Here’s my perfect vocal chain and the plugins that get me there
Struggling to make your vocals sit in the mix? Here’s a tutorial on how you can build your perfect vocal chain